The Sensex sank below the 29000-level, while the Nifty dived almost 500 points on Wednesday as the coronavirus pandemic maintained its death grip on markets across the globe.

S&P lowering India’s growth forecast and the Supreme Court’s refusal to provide relief to telecom firms on the AGR issue further sapped the risk appetite, traders said.

After swinging over 2488.72 points in a highly volatile session, the 30-share BSE Sensex closed 1709.58 points, or 5.59 per cent, lower at 28869.51.

The Sensex has closed below the 29000-mark for the first time since January 2017.

On similar lines, the broader NSE Nifty plummeted 498.25 points, or 5.56 per cent, to end at 8468.80.

Barring ONGC and ITC, all Sensex constituents finished in the red. IndusInd Bank was the top loser, diving 23.90 per cent, followed by PowerGrid, Kotak Bank, Bajaj Finance, HDFC Bank and NTPC.

Banking and telecom stocks came under heavy selling pressure after the Supreme Court pulled up the telecom companies for doing self-assessment of the AGR dues fixed by the apex court.

“Indian markets ended at three-year lows, with Nifty below the 8500-mark, in tandem with Asian and European markets after global agencies warned of a global recession following the impact of Covid-19. At the same time, rising infections in India and associated disruption in businesses led to India’s GDP growth forecasts also being downgraded. This will also affect the government’s fiscal maths, which was already tight,” said Vinod Nair, head of research at Geojit Financial Services.

RBI move

The Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday announced open market operations (OMOs) of Rs 10,000 crore to push down bond yields that have risen following the coronavirus outbreak.

In a statement, the central bank said it will conduct open market operations on March 20 in the form of purchase of an aggregate amount of Rs 10,000 crore of four securities.